Picture day

Brandt had his first real pictures taken today at three. Of all the days for him to refuse to nap, it had to be today! Fortunately he was still smiley despite being super tired for the first half of the photo shoot.

Then he fell asleep for the second half of the shoot and Erika got a lot of good sleeping pictures, posing him with various toys, of course.

He wore his new shirt from H&M and size 3 months shorts. I weighed him yesterday after baby and mommy yoga and he's somewhere around 16 pounds 6 ounces (he wouldn't sit still so it was hard to tell for sure) and he's still extra long so I guess it's no surprise he fits in 3M shorts even with bulkyish cloth diapers underneath.

I was tempted to trim a bit of his hair before the pictures, but I restrained myself. While Brandt's baby friends have the little swirl in the middle of their heads, Brandt's entire head of hair is one big swirl so he seems to have an extra tuft behind his left ear where the swirl terminates. Fortunately it was behaving today so I wasn't tempted to snip or pomade it.

Corn Creek Spring

We're finally just about over the cold so we went on a little adventure today. We drove 50 minutes north to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge for a guided walk of the Corn Creek Spring.

Unfortunately it was a little windy so most of the wildlife was scared off, but we saw a bull frog, a tadpole, Sonny the horse (and fed him some apples), some fish, and a few birds. We also saw the state's biggest pecan tree (well, not officially yet, but it's just a matter of paperwork...Reno, you are warned!) and the state's largest (official) white mulberry tree. It was nice to see naturally occurring water and green stuff.

Bunny at the District

Cough cough...I am still so sick, and I got Brandt sick, too, though not as bad. Dan convinced me we should get out into the fresh air, so we schlepped down to the District to see the Easter stuff (face painting, balloon animals, Easter bunny, etc, etc). I liked the look of the bunny--he wore a snazzy shiny jacket. The bunny at the outlet center only wore a tie. But the line was hella long and the bunny was leaving exactly at 2pm, no matter how many kids were left in line, so we didn't bother with him.

All the kids got their own paper bunny ears, but this picture is the closest we got to getting them on Brandt's head. He wouldn't even let Dan wear them. I guess it's a good thing we didn't sic him on the bunny--he probably would have attacked his ears, too.

The sniffles

Yesterday I got an e-mail from one of the babies we played with at the park on Thursday and it turns out her runny nose was not allergies after all, but rather a cold with ear infection. She caught the cold from her neighbor baby whose doctor says it will last 10-12 days. And now I have it! The other mamas don't have it, just the babies. So I'm a little embarrassed that I've been knocked on my ass by a baby cold!

Brandt and Danny are taking good care of me, and as you can see Brandt is drawing a nice bath for me to help with my congestion.

I was too sick to realize that Brandt is 11 months old today. Definitely time for another pic of his bare butt then.

Explor(ation)ing the Old West

So it's our third visit to Exploration Park, but this is the first time we've played in the Old West town part of it. Note: Brandt didn't climb up this wall (or the net in the park yesterday), I just stick him up there and he clings indefinitely. Good fun. Of course I'd like the Old West park better if it wasn't blanketed with all those tasty-looking wood chips. You can tell from Brandt's expression that he's plotting his next sneaky wood chip snack attack.

It appears Brandt has finally outgrown his Baby Naartjie sun hat. Good thing we visited the brand new H&M at Town Square yesterday. It was small, but it had some baby stuff so we got a new baby sun hat...and a baby shirt, and a hat and belt for me.

Town Square

We checked out the new Town Square today. The playground was very nice, but very crowded since today was storytime day. Storytime was way cool, too: there was juggling and bubbles and singing and stickers. Oh, and stories.

Next to the kiddie park was a grassy area, but with fake grass. Brandt didn't know what to make of the fake grass, but I was overjoyed that he could crawl around without snacking on grass blades.

This morning I discovered Brandt loves blueberry yogurt. Plain, banana, and vanilla weren't big hits previously. And tomorrow we'll try apple. Yippee.

Not-so-funny bunny

In my ongoing effort to be bi-denominational, I took Brandt to meet the Easter Bunny at the outlet center today. As you can see, he wasn't really digging it. I can't say I blame him--that bunny looks creepy, doesn't he? We might try again with a different bunny in a few days off.

Brandt hasn't slithered in days, but he sometimes gets a little too eager in his crawling and flips endo: he puts his right foot flat on the floor and pushes so hard that he sometimes can't keep his left arm straight and somersaults. As you can imagine, he finds this quite upsetting.

Yesterday we checked out the new Palazzo, where Financial Kim and Eric are staying for a couple days. It's pretty! We had lunch next door at the Venetian where Brandt was quite taken with the jugglers in St. Mark's Square.

Brandt went to another birthday party this afternoon, this time at My Indoor Garden indoor park. Unfortunately he slept through most of it and when he woke up, was too shy to play on all the soft tumbling toys until the last ten minutes. And once we got home he went berserk and ran amok with Dan for a couple hours before settling down. Such a shame! I wish he'd been a madman at the party.

Five dolla' find

We hit the Pickled Pepper Kids semiannual huge consignment sale today and scored an activity table thingy for five bucks. It's not as cool as baby Hannah's Learn & Groove Musical Table that taught me the alphabet song en español, but Brandt says it'll do and it's good to bang on.

Actually, Brandt only banged on it for a short while before he decided to climb on it. He's also shoving it around the room like a walker. So he's doing more shoving and scaling than standing and banging, but either way, it's already proven its worth.

I also scored a brand new Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden Cutting Fruit Crate that we'll hide until his birthday. Brandt loves holding toys above his head and trying to tear them apart so I think he'll really like unvelcroing the fruit. We found so good clothing, too. Not as good as last time when I scored the Raiders onesie/sweatpants set for three dollars, but we got some good hawaiian shirts.

Power steering

We went to a playdate at Gabby's today and she had some awesome toys. Brandt rode on a car with a working steering wheel.

I don't know if his right leg is stronger than the left, but since he uses it more during his wounded soldier slither, he used it more on the car today and mainly drove around in circles. He also had fun watching Gabby's big boxer puppy through the sliding glass door. He and another baby banged on the glass and screeched as the dog jumped up and down at them.

Brandt had fun watching little birds during brunch on Saturday so yesterday we walked around the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve. Of course he had no interest in them this time. Sigh.

The yolk's on Brandt

Breakfast was egg yolk this morning. So not too exciting, but Brandt was so smiley that I just had to take a picture.

We went to Discovery Park to meet some other babies today. I stuck Brandt in a swing for the first time. Last Tuesday at Gymcats the teacher tied a knot in the bottom of the aerial silks to make a bed and put the babies in there one at a time and he was having none of it. But he was OK with the swing today. He wasn't ecstatic about it, but he was OK. Maybe next time I'll give him a little push.

Baby's first drum circle

If it's Sunday, it must be farmers' market. Dan's gonna groan when he sees this picture, but I thought Brandt would like the kiddie music area at the Hollywood Farmers' Market. He wasn't too into it, but only because he was ready for a nap, so we'll give it another go next time. He didn't even wake up to receive his gerbera daisy ("Free flowers for kids!"), but there was no bottom age limit or wakefulness limit so I selected him an orange one and wedged it into his paw.

Good ride back home. 3:45 again, with a brief stop in Baker. It was sunny the whole way, but wiiiindy. We saw a semi truck blown over on its side and not even near the SLOW TRUCKS sign. Brandt was a cool cucumber for 95% of the ride, but for the last 15 minutes I had to play the 25 second xylophone intro of Brandt's favorite Taj Mahal song over and over and over.

Yesterday everyone commented on how much hair Brandt has grown. It's hard to notice when I see him everyday, so yay! He's still a long way from needing haircuts or product, but it'll happen someday.

Babysitting redux

Alex and Emilie volunteered to babysit baby Miles tonight and Brandt and I offered to help. I don't know what I was thinking since I was such a lame babysitter to baby Dominic back in January...I guess I hoped to redeem myself.

I don't know if I can consider myself redeemed, but the babysitting went very well. Of course Emilie did all the work while I just watched. I'd like to think my presense was a calming influence on baby Miles, but he's a pretty chill dude to begin with.

This morning we had brunch at Alcove Cafe and I let Brandt eat some of my potatoes and he *loved* them. All this time I thought he wasn't into solids, but he's just not into bland solids. I feel so bad about the plain broccoli and tofu we ate the other day. I didn't enjoy eating it, yet I expected the mouse to. So we'll eat more interesting stuff going forward.

The drive down was good. It took 3:45 and included one quick bathroom and snack break in Barstow. The drive looked a bit different, though. The Rock-a-Hoda (which I now learn is really Rock-a-Hoola) water slides have disappeared which I find kinda sad. First the Nevada Landing casino in Jean closed down and now this. At least the "Crookest [sic] sheriff in the USA" homemade billboard on the other side of the freeway from Rock-a-Hoda is still there. And it looks like the CLOSED FOR REPAIRS rest areas have finally become a priority because parts of the old structures have been knocked down and construction equipment is parked next to mounds of dirt.

So, yeah, it was a pretty exciting ride. Actually, it was a pretty weird ride. For the first time ever, everyone had to stop at the agriculture check. I would have been mad about the brief stop waking up the baby, but the old man said, "Oh my gosh! I'm talking to Venus!" If only I'd been quick enough to say "Why thanks, Uranus!" back, but I'd been awake since 5:30 so I just smiled...and got a "Your sweet smile is the highlight of my day!" Weirdo.